Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus eBook

CHAPTER XVIII.

The Show Strikes Virginia
and the Educated Ourang Outang Has the
Whooping Cough—­The
Bad Boy Plays the Part of a Monkey, but They
Forget to Pin on a Tail.

Well, I have broke the show all to pieces, just by
not being able to stand grief. Everything is
all balled up, the managers are sore at me, and afraid
of being sent to jail, and pa thinks I ought to be
mauled.

It was this way: When we left Washington we cut
loose from every home tie, and plunged into Virginia,
and the trouble began at once. We met a lawyer
on the train, on the way to Richmond, and fed him in
our dining car, and got him acquainted with all the
performers and freaks, and he told us that we would
have to be careful in Virginia, ’cause all the
white people were first families and aristocratic,
and if any man about our show should fail to be polite
to the white people they would be shot or lynched,
but if we wanted to shoot niggers the game laws were
not very strict about it, ’cause the open season
on niggers run the year around, but you couldn’t
shoot white people only two months in the year.
He said another thing that scared pa and the managers.
He said that if a traveling show did not perform all
it advertised the owners were liable to go to state
prison for 20 years, and that each town had men on
the lookout to see that shows didn’t advertise
what they didn’t carry out.

Pa and the managers held a consultation, and couldn’t
find that we advertised anything that we didn’t
have, except the ourang outang that we took on at
New York, which eats and dresses like a man, ’cause
that animal got whooping cough in Delaware and had
to be sent to a hospital, but we heard he was well
again and would join the show in a week. Pa asked
the Richmond lawyer how it would be if one of the animals
that was advertised was sick and couldn’t perform,
and he told pa the people would mob the show if anything
was left out.

When we got to Richmond the whole population, principally
niggers, was at the lot when we put up the tents,
and everybody wanted to catch a sight of Dennis, the
ourang outang, and the posters all over town that
pictured Dennis smoking cigarettes with a dress suit
on, and eating with a knife and fork and a napkin
tucked under his chin, were surrounded by crowds.
It was plain that all the people cared for was to see
the monk.

The managers held a council of war and decided the
show would be ruined if we didn’t make a bluff
at having an ourang outang, so it was decided that
I was to be dressed up in Dennis’ clothes, and
put on a monkey mask, and go through his stunt at
the afternoon performance.

Gee, but I hated to do it, but pa said the fate of
the show depended on it and if I didn’t take
the part he would have to do it himself, and I knew
pa wasn’t the build of man to play the monkey,
and so I said I would do it, but I will never do it
again for any show. The wardrobe woman fixed
my up like Dennis, and I had seen him go through his
stunt so often I thought I could imitate him, and
of course there was no talking to do, but just to
grunt once in awhile, the way Dennis did, and have
an animal look.